How 10-year-old boy survived bombing of Middlesbrough Railway Station

James Henwood, 82, has told how he could be the last man alive, who lived to tell the tale of the Second World War bombing

Perhaps the most enduring image of Teesside during the Second World War is the bombing of Middlesbrough Railway Station.

It was on August 3 1942 that a lone Luftwaffe Dornier Do 217 evaded British air defences, took aim at the Victorian glass and steel structure below, and dropped a single bomb, killing eight railway workers and civilians.

Now, James Henwood, 82, has told The Gazette how he could be the last man alive, who lived to tell the tale.

“August 3 1942 - Bank Holiday. If I could paint, I would get every detail,” said James, “It’s so vivid.”

“I was 10 at the time. I had an aunt, Sarah ‘Sally’ Davis, who lived in Blyth in Northumberland.

“I remember she was wearing a blue felt hat and was carrying a big bunch of flowers in one hand and a case containing half a dozen eggs in the other.

“Nearly every year at that time, she would come down to visit us in Middlesbrough. We’d had a nice weekend and she was leaving to go back on the train to Newcastle.”

James escorted his Aunt Sally to the railway station along with his older brother Ronald, and mum Elsie while his dad, Herbert, stayed at the family home in Acklam, Middlesbrough.

James said: “As we walked along, the air-raid siren went off. But we were that used to hearing it we just carried on to the station.

“In them days there was a big barrier between the passengers and everyone else. I was stood with my brother near the gate.

“My aunt got onto the train and we were waving when, all of a sudden, it happened.

“It wasn’t a bang - It was this deep whoomph.”

At 1.08pm, the German bomb had made a direct hit, completely destroying the station’s Victorian roof and the waiting train at the platform below.

James said: “The next thing, I couldn’t see. There was just chaos. It had knocked my brother and my mother over and the whole glass roof was coming down.

“I just ran - I was off.

“I was sprinting when my brother grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and we all hid behind the one of the doors leading to Albert Road until everything died down a bit.”

Terror quickly turned to worry as thoughts turned to Aunt Sally, who moments earlier had boarded the train.

“We went back to see if my aunt was alive or not. When we got to the station there was a lot of rubble. The place was just chaos.

“As we walked in, we saw one guy had been killed in the luggage office, then we saw the train which had been completely destroyed.”

By chance, three trains which are thought to have been the bomber’s target, had just left the station when the bomb exploded leaving only the one boarded by Sally.

“When we finally saw Sally, it was terrible. She was sat on the railway line and there was a soldier trying to help her.

“She still had her case in her hand and she was holding the bunch of flowers even though they were just stalks.”

Sally had survived but the sight of his aunt was shocking to James. And several surreal details have cemented into James’s mind.

He said: “She was in a hell of a state and kept saying, ‘Where’s my hat? Where’s my hat?’

“The soldier went back look for it and, perched on top of this big pile of rubble, was her blue hat. It was so strange.

“Amazingly she was okay but very shaken up. We stayed a while and then, it was odd, we just got the bus back home.”

Meanwhile, James’s father, a First World War veteran, had heard the sound of the explosion and was filled with terror.

James said: “We lived in the lower part of Acklam. My father used to do repairs, especially for bomb damaged property.

“He knew exactly where the bomb had gone off. He had heard the explosion and he knew straight away that it was Middlesbrough Station.”

“Because of his job, he had the right to a car.

In a panic, he had taken it out of the garage about a dozen times wondering what to do.

“Eventually we wandered in, all of us just a complete mess.

“My mother, who had been a midwife, got some eye baths out and Sally put her case on the kitchen top. When she opened it, every single egg was in one piece.

“After all that we all just got on with life and after a while we got over it.”

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